The idea is to offer a platform that lets traditional web developers build native mobile applications that include the necessary tools for selling goods, services, and content.

Titanium is an open source platform that fashions native runtimes using traditional web development tools, including JavaScript, HTML, and CSS. Longtime web devs can build for, say, the iPhone without learning Objective C — and then easily use the same code on other devices. The kit provides APIs for building runtimes for Android phones, and Windows, Linux, and Mac desktops and notebooks, as well as iPhones and iPads.

In partnering with PayPal, Appcelerator is offering PayPal's mobile-payments library as a "module" for the kit. "We've taken PayPal's SDK and made that accessible to any web developer looking to build a mobile application," Appcelerator VP of marketing Scott Schwarzhoff tells The Reg. "Before this, the mobile-payments library was only available to an Objective C developer on iOS or a Java developer [and so on]."

Dubbed Titantium+Commerce, the new version of the kit is available now as a beta, and Appcelerator plans to officially ship it in early 2011, according to Schwartzhoff, and it will be available through PayPal's merchant channel. Today, Appcelerator offers a PayPal module for Apple's iOS. But an Android module is "coming soon."

The mobile-payments library module is part of a larger commercial partnership between Appcelerator and PayPal that will see the two companies offer technologies that cover "a broader range of integrated commerce capabilities," including transaction analytics.

Appcelerator says that it's now the second-largest Apple App store publisher. According to the company, over 77,000 developers have used the Titanium platform to build 5,000 mobile and desktop apps. ®